


Metanoia

by PsiCygni



Series: Transmutations [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsiCygni/pseuds/PsiCygni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has never made him feel alien, or strange, and he does not need comfort, and does not seek it, and therefore does not assign such a word to the way she kisses him when she enters his apartment, her hand wrapped around the back of his neck, or the sound of his native language when she speaks it.  Companion piece to Transmutations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metanoia

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to Transmutations. Up to you if you want to read it first, but you probably should, since I wrote it first and it might all make more sense that way. There are some details explain in that story that might help here, and vice versa. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9576734/1/Transmutations or http://archiveofourown.org/works/921483 
> 
> It is not a perfect mirror, since I think some small details and bits of the timeline conflict with each other, and both pieces have seemingly important events that the other does not. I figure that Nyota and Spock would view the whole thing differently, and different things would seem important to them. This was really, really hard to write without making Spock seem like a huge sleaze for inviting a female student over to his place to have sex, and for not trying to counter that and end up making him seem like too much of a sap. I’m not as satisfied with it as Transmutations, partly because Spock is a little wordy, and it ruins the flow and rhythm, and also the premise doesn’t lend itself to his point of view, since part of what made the other one great was not really having the surprise that he was inviting a student over and banging her, but it turns out he was this really sweet guy. It was also hard and kind of annoying since he’s high maintenance when it comes to feeling his feels. There was something easier about this in Nyota’s point of view, where she can ignore her feelings, as opposed to Spock who is like damn it, I’m a Vulcan, not a guy who’s falling in love, so I imagine this as a follow up piece to Transmutations, not as a stand alone on it’s own merit.
> 
> Also, I worked on this for so long that I have lots of cut scenes (as long as the story itself) that I’m going to put on my tumblr. http://psicygni.tumblr.com/ if you’re interested.

She is not shy, or uncertain, and while he is not an expert at human interactions, he is relieved when an invitation to his apartment in the evening brokers no misunderstanding.

When he raises a hand to her face that first night, his body already taut and expectant, he expects her hesitation, not her ready acquiescence. She kisses him as he brushes his thoughts against hers and runs her fingers through his hair. Her knees slide up his sides, as open and willing as her mind.

…

He begins to notice her after his second lecture. While he is quite capable of separating any sexual desire from his work, he has more than once paused while cleaning dishes or while running only to realize he has been thinking about how she moves when she speaks, or they way she walks, holds her padd, crosses her legs at her desk.

She pushes his syllabus to a degree that leaves other students confused by her questions and leads him back to his office to conduct further research. He does not use words like vexing and exasperating to describe his students and focuses on the fact that he finds her questions after class quite stimulating.

When he mentions that he has a paper copy of an Andorian epic poem in his quarters after she expresses interest in the subject, it is not without ancillary intent. She is beautiful, something he does not dismiss or ignore, and when she kisses him, he does not stop himself from putting his hands around her waist before sliding them lower. It is not until she is dressing he realizes that despite his enjoyment of the activities they engaged in, those that she initiated as much as he did, he actually would have been content discussing the poem and hearing her opinions on it.

…

He respects both her intellect and academic achievement. The way her legs fit around his waist and her breath hitches when he pushes into her does not diminish or alter this. He spends a long night in his office researching Tellarite bimoraic syllables, since he finds he cannot satisfactorily answer her inquiries. He asks to speak with her after class, but before he can finish his answer, she stops him.

“I already looked it up. Thanks though.” She smiles at him as she puts her comm and padd in her bag. “See you later.”

It is simpler to sleep with her than to be her professor. He has never backed down from a difficult task and applies himself to finding a topic she does not know about.

…

He fully understands the differences in biology that make touch telepathy possible for him, and further knows that he has no wish to be intimate without it. He has long considered the unethical implications inherent in his ability to transmit thoughts and how easily his own desire could become coercive. He has resolved to always ask, and to explain if his partner does not fully understand the significance of his request. As ever, he remains braced if not for outright rejection, then the more insidious but no less painful incomprehension.

She is a talented linguist and an excellent communications track cadet and has repeatedly demonstrated interest and curiosity in other cultures. He is not surprised that she readily agrees, or that her mind is far more open than others he has experienced. He carefully filters the sensations back to her, shielding the corners of his mind he has no desire share. 

While there are some parts of his life he does not attempt to quantify, he is mindful nonetheless that he has a powerful, visceral physical reaction to her body and her thoughts. Often, when he pulls her leg up and pushes inside her, he grits his teeth against the rush of sensations, unsure he can fully control himself under the dizzying onslaught of their simultaneous responses. Her hands scrabble against his shoulder and she rolls her hips into his in an every increasing pace. He feels the echo of his own body in her mind as she arches off the bed, feels her flushed and expectant under him, and the way she gasps and draws her legs higher on his back. 

While they speak of morphemes, phonemes, and the intricacies of the Romulan subjunctive, they do not speak of this, but continue to see each other as often as their schedules allow.

…

He sends her a newly published paper on Klingon fricatives and they discuss it over lunch. She gestures as she explains her theory about how the sibilants relate to the Klingon culture and her eyes are bright, and she speaks quickly. She does not act intimidated as he watches her in silence, and does not seem offended when he tells her that while her argument is logically sound, he does not wholly agree with her conclusions. She shrugs, apparently confident in her analysis, and leaves him in the lab rereading the article as she walks to her afternoon class.

…

He sees her often in class and they speak often in the lab. When she out competes other applicants for his teaching assistant opening, they share an office. When she leans over him, her knees on either side of his hips, and presses her fingers to his, they share their awareness of their bodies.. 

He does not feel anything besides the press of their skin and their bodies coming together and does not want to. He prefers the deep, coursing pleasure running through her body and his, and the echo of their movements in the way she scrapes her nails against his shoulder, breathes against his ear, than to pry into her thoughts as they grow quiet, their bodies grow hot, and he grabs her hips and tries not to groan with the sheer force of it all. 

…

He has long scratches over his shoulder and a distinct bruise on his neck when he calls his mother that week. He puts on his uniform jacket over his undershirt and if she notices he is wearing it despite the late hour on Earth, she does not comment.

…

He cannot wholly restrain his physical reaction to her when her mind runs through a myriad of Vulcan verbs that accurately and unerringly describe their current actions, despite working towards a control and mastery of himself for years. 

He leans back against the headboard as she remains warm and flushed on his lap. He removes his hand from her waist, touching her back, her hair, lightly, grounding himself against the echoes of throbbing pleasure that still bleed through their twined fingers. She shifts on him and he thinks he actually groans, his hand grabbing her hip to still her. He feels her smile against his cheek and she kisses him softly. “You have to teach me more words.”

It is logical to help her acquire new skills. He slips his fingers from hers and places them against her face, lowering her under him. He is still shaking, or she is, and when he starts to sketch words and images from his thoughts to hers, it is not long until her legs wrap around his hips and her hands dig into his back as they begin move again.

…

He deduces within 2.3 minutes of their first interaction outside of class that Cadet Gaila must be her roommate. She has a tendency to greet him with a tone he can only describe as lascivious. She is in his Intermediate Artificial Intelligence seminar, a course at which she excels. He is pleased with her progress, and more pleased when his nights with her roommate become frequent enough she grows bored with her teasing.

…

They discuss what they know of the Bjoran language after work one evening, her fingers skimming across a padd on his desk. He has to wait days to talk to her about it again, since she has assignments due in most of her classes. He finds himself studying a Bjoran text more than once and notes questions to ask her. 

When he sees her again, she takes the stylus from his hand without asking and points to the padd between them on the couch. “The inflection is on the second syllable.”

“It says here-“

“That’s not right, I can hear it-“

“I assure you-“

“It’s a book, not the spoken language.” She flicks through her explanation on the padd before pushing it to the side so that it hangs off the edge of his coffee table. He makes himself take a deep breath and moves it so that it is parallel to the other items on the table. He is not often wrong. 

She draws him over her and slides her hands under his shirt, her nails tracing patters over the sensitive skin on his ribs. He feels her body, and the way her thigh rubs between his, and the warm skin of her neck. He focuses on not feeling anything else and when his hands find her he is quite capable of thinking of nothing other than the slick slide into her and her breath against his ear, whispering in Bjoran as she smiles.

…

He finds her comm under his bed when it chimes, a pair of earrings on his nightstand, and a sweatshirt on his couch. He hands her comm back in the office, since she will need it and the constant messages from her friends are distracting in the quiet of his apartment. He leaves her other belongings on his table for her to retrieve at her leisure.

Pike eyes them when he drops off a blueprint of the science station on the bridge and crosses his arm, pinning Spock with a stare and peppering him with questions.

“I have no comment on the matter,” he says, flicking through the stack of padds. He will not lie, but he can remain silent under Pike’s inquiries, a tactic that often worked as an adolescent with his father. While regulations do not prohibit him seeing a student, he has no desire to interfere with her eventual commission due to any assumptions the captain would make as to their personal relationship. It is not personal, it is sex. He is not sure the captain would understand, or accept the difference, and he is unsure he can clearly articulate it. 

…

He leaves for a week to oversee the installation of lab equipment on the Enterprise. He ignores the thoughts that pull his focus from his work and spends any extra time away from the labs grading quizzes she emails him. 

When he returns, their reactions are heated and immediate. She is still breathing heavily when he kisses her stomach and he leans his head on her hip as she slowly releases her grip on his hair. He feels her pulse slow slightly and her hands tugging at him, pulling him over her as she digs her heel into the small of his back. His fingers find her face and a small sound escapes her at the press of their minds, her thoughts as familiar the grinding, hot, pleasure between them. When he rolls her on her back a second time and she groans against his neck, asking for more, harder, and afterwards, when they are laying together in the tangled sheets and she has not stopped kissing him, he is able to fully quiet whatever pulled at him while he was away.

“Tell me,” she says, when they finally still. “Tell me everything.” It is the first night she ever stays for any length of time, and as he answers her questions about the ship he watches her eyes grow bright and her attention focus as he speaks, her fingers stroking over his palm and wrist.

…

While she does not treat him as something exotic or the result of some fetish, he is not always wholly comfortable with her scrutiny. He has been stared at and singled out his entire life and the one night she enters his apartment and simply looks at him, he nearly asks her not to. 

“Nice pants,” she finally says, flicking her gaze over his science uniform and tracing the seam of the blue shirt across his shoulder. He does not understand her fascination with his active duty uniform, beyond the fact that he rarely wears it at the Academy. He lets her touch him for a long moment, slowly relaxing under the way her fingers trace his chest and shoulders.

“What are you doing?” he asks, but does not reach to stop her when she slips her hand under his waistband. She puts her other hand in his and he tightens his fingers over it, letting her feel what he does.

“This is a clean uniform,” he finally says, his eyes trained on the movement of her hand under the fabric. “Please- I do not- ah- think-,” he manages, leaning a hand against the wall to steady himself, “that this is a logical place to-” 

She grins when he pulls her hand away, unzips his pants, and lifts her against the wall. She helps him fumble for her underwear, kissing him when he pushes into her and she is slick and open and wraps her legs around his waist. He is always ready for her to ask why he is strong enough to hold her up with one arm, the other raised to touch her face, or to fixate on his ears, and when they are slick with sweat, to ask him why his apartment is so hot. She just smiles when he sets her back down, says “that was fun” and goes to her study group, leaving him to change his uniform before his evening meeting.

…

When he leaves a neat stack of padds on the chair where she usually drops her jacket, he is already holding out his hand to take her coat before he realizes what he is doing. She places her boots in the same place in his foyer and puts her comm and padd on the same corner of his table. He hears a song in the gym, and realizes it is only familiar because she learned it for the Academy Chorus and occasionally goes over the melody in her mind. He deduces that it is logical and to be expected that he begins to know these things about her as a side effect of the sheer amount of time he spends with her hand in his, his fingers against her face, speaking for long hours after their work is finished.

She eats a sandwich for lunch forty eight percent of the time, and has 2.6 cups of coffee on average each morning, placing her mug on the same corner of her desk, and never drinking the last three ounces. He thinks about the patterns she creates in his life only long enough to move the schematics from the chair before the next time she arrives and to ask her if she would like another cup of coffee as he stands to get his own tea.

…

“Since you will not lie, remaining silent is only conceding that you are, in fact, interested in someone, even if you will not answer my question in the affirmative, and even if you claim you have never said anything to inform me of such an occurrence,” his mother says calmly. He knows his mother is an exceptional and unique woman, and that she is unfortunately perceptive and at times knows him better than he wishes. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

His mother smiles as she speaks and the memory of her fingers turning the ancient paper page rises to his mind. A human ritual, she had said in a serious tone. Bedtime stories are an important part of your heritage. Now lie back down and don’t tell your father.

He is Vuclan. Vulcans do not fidget. “That is logical,” he finally says. Vulcans not feel petulant, either, and he keeps his face carefully neutral for the remainder of their conversation.

…

They are highly incompatible. His entire life is based around logic, a principle she often ignores, to his ire and consternation. 

She will not replace her comm, despite the fact that her roommate inadvertently broke the casing in an event she refuses to describe in any detail. She claims she is attached to it, notwithstanding that she can barely read the screen. She takes her hand from his when he asks her to explain how one can be emotionally invested in an inanimate object, but not before he can feel a fleeting, and incomprehensible, sense of embarrassment from her regarding the issue. Instead, she pokes his side, which he knows she knows he does not like, and tells him she always knows what his messages are asking.

She eats a pint of ice cream for dinner one night, and declines his offer to get her something more nutritious. She replicates coffee from the break room near his office at 1900 hours, even though she complains she will not be able to sleep, and then glances over and asks if he is busy later that evening. 

She argues with him over Andorian syntax and Romulan dialects and Klingon tenses.

“You are quite stubborn,” he says, after bringing up a grammar database on his padd, which she illogically refuses to look at.

“Oh please,” she says, raising an eyebrow in what he is quite sure is an imitation of him. 

“Explain.”

“Nope,” she says and shuts off the padd and starts kissing him without further clarification or a satisfactory conclusion to their discussion.

He bruises her hips one night when she is on her hands and knees and grinding back into him. She waves off his breathless apologies as he pulls out of her, the echo of how good it felt to grab her so tightly, to drag his teeth along the back of her neck, still coursing through him.

“I hurt you,” he gasps, moving away when she reaches for him.

“Spock, if you don’t come back here and finish this-” 

“I hurt you,” he says again, shaking his head. “I did not intend-“

Her hands are small and warm on his face, and when she sits on his lap and says an apology is enough, he tells her that her statement is illogical and she just shakes her head and kisses him until he begins to touch her again. 

…

The discuss the use of subjunctive in 21st Century Terran music and listen to clips together on his couch. Their hands touch frequently and he cannot help but feel what she does.

“You find it fascinating. My emotional response to the music.,” she says and laughs, apparently feeling his perplexity and interest in her response.

Her hand slips into his more fully as the sound fills his living room and he does look away from her face as she listens, and does not let go of her hand as he feels her experience, so completely different than what he hears from the notes. He appreciates music as an aural expression of mathematic theories of harmonies, chords, and the interplay between consonance and dissonance. He finds himself leaning closer to her as he feels what she does.

“Indeed,” he says, drawing her hand closer as she laughs again. It is a warm buzz in his fingers and arm. “Most fascinating.”

…

He knows more about her than he ever expected to, clips and images of her life he gleans even as their skin cools and he takes his hand from her face before he inadvertently intrudes further. He can name and recognize her friends, knows her normal running routes, and all of her current class work. Her sister is pregnant, her mother recently retired, and her brother’s daughter lost a tooth. It feels far more illicit and intimate than when he pushes her legs apart, or when she sketches thoughts into his mind that make him unbuckle his belt with clumsy fingers.

He does not ask what she has learned about him, but eats the Vulcan flatbread she brings him from the cafeteria that is his favorite and wipes surprise from his face when she knows facts about his life he is sure he never intended to tell her.

He resolves to better guard both of their privacies, since sharing his bed does not mean sharing their lives. He resolves to stop asking about her morning run, her sister’s health, her roommate’s trip to Ganymede, and to find a new favorite food even as he hands her a piece to try.

…

Her ID is constantly at the top of his call log on his comm and his inbox is full of their correspondence, finishing discussions that were interrupted by their other responsibilities. Their schedules are busy, fully of classes and meetings, and for him the Enterprise and the Kobayashi Maru. She has, more than once, turned her padd back on before she finishes dressing, and he has pulled her hands from him and climbed out of bed to answer his comm when it rings.

It is logical that they see each other when they can. It is not logical to reach for his comm at 0347 to ask her thoughts on Andorian ceremonial chants, and he sends her the paper he is reading instead, as they can discuss it at a more convenient time.

… 

They are not compatible, and he finds he does not always mind. 

She sits on his counter while he washes dishes, drying them with a towel as she swings her feet against the lower cupboards.

“That is an unsanitary place to sit,” he says, eyeing her skirt on the clean surface.

“Come here,” she says, and wraps her leg around his waist and bites his ear.

She puts her feet under his thigh to warm them when she sits sideways on his couch, and refuses socks. She dips kreila into peanut butter and when he frowns, simply holds out a piece to him. He does not like to touch his food, but can see the appeal of letting her do so as her fingers brush over his mouth when he leans forward to take a bite.

She asks if she can use his shower since she does not have time to return to her dorm, then looks over her shoulder and asks if he is joining her. It is very inefficient use of water and time to shower with another. He braces his hand on the slick tile as her fingers pump over him languidly. He cannot make himself look away from her soapy hand on him, and cannot look away from her eyes when he grabs her by the backs of her thighs and raises her against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth open as they both gasp in the humid air.

…

“Spock.” His mother’s voice is gentle. “Honey. Do you want to talk about it?”

He looks down at his hands for a long moment. “No,” he says eventually.

…

Many of his students and colleagues are female, and many of them are objectively attractive. He is not ignorant of the sea of long legs and fit bodies toned by rigorous Academy training in his lecture halls, not unsuspecting of the visits to his office hours with no concrete questions or concerns regarding course materials, and not oblivious to their inquiries into his evening and weekend plans. 

They are all easy to ignore as she bends over her work, her hair falling over her shoulder as she sends him another graded quiz, another question regarding his rubric. The others are easily dismissed from his mind in a way that she is increasingly not.

…

It is logical that he joins her when she is assigned a documentary on the Cardassian Empire for her Comparative Xenocultures class, as he is interested in the subject and wishes to learn more. He does not have to touch her to know what she thinks about it, since they can discuss it afterwards, but he does so anyway, drawing her hand into his and letting her settle her head onto his shoulder. 

She gets up to get a plate of leftovers halfway through and grins at him when she brings it back to the couch.

“This drives you nuts,” she says, and sits down next to him. “I won’t leave my dirty plate out for even a minute. Eating in front of the TV is an ancient custom in my family, and one that I am required to observe and continue.”

“You are teasing me,” he says. He does not enjoy being teased and often does not understand the impetus behind the, yet he finds he is content with her teasing him, and content with her empty plate on the coffee table when he lowers her to the couch. It is hard to care as her foot strokes up his calf and her hands slip under his shirt, her body soft and warm under his. 

…

They are compatible, something he tries to ignore but increasingly cannot.

He goes over her subspace physics exam with her, sitting in the tangled sheets of his bed, because it a subject at which he excels and she does not, and it is logical, therefore, that he should help her. 

She tells him Pike is making a gesture by inviting him for a drink, and that while the captain obviously does not excel at identifying ways in which to relate to other cultures, he is trying to engage Spock in the way he knows how. 

“It’s good for your career,” she says, zipping up her skirt and looking around for her boots. He hands her one from near his closet and she pulls it on. 

He was a cadet and partook in the human oddity of conversing at bars. He is quite capable of having a drink with a colleague. He does not continue to think about their discussion, just folds his uniform neatly and arranges his comm and padd in perfectly parallel lines on his bureau. He is not satisfied, and instead stacks them, then moves them to his desk, standing in the other room for a long moment. 

He hears her follow him into the living room and she looks at him closely. “Order a Budweiser Classic,” she says, and touches his arm, one of the small gestures she has begun to make around him. “And you can talk to him about the ship the whole time, he won’t mind, or he’ll bring up other topics. And let him pay if he wants.”

He is not appreciative of her advice, and not relieved that she offered it without him having to ask. “That is illogical. I have my own credits.”

She smiles and stands on her toes to kiss him. “I know,” she says, kissing him again. “I completely agree.”

…

He knows other professors seek her out for research projects, and many men ask her if she’s free that evening, that weekend. He is quite adept at controlling his feelings, and his race has not allowed themselves to feel possessive or jealous for centuries. He has always admired her independence and recognizes that she is completely capable of making her own decisions about sharing her time and body. 

He sends her journal articles he thinks she may find interesting, and discusses them with her in his office as the sun sets and the rest of campus empties for the night. He brings her tea, coffee, lunch, asks if she has eaten or if he should reheat leftovers for her. He lays her on her back on his bed and kneels between her legs until she is shaking and dragging her nails across his shoulders. Her heel beats a bruise into his back and her fingers twist against his, hard, as she moans.

…

She has never made him feel alien, or strange, and he does not need comfort, and does not seek it, and therefore does not assign such a word to the way she kisses him when she enters his apartment, her hand wrapped around the back of his neck, or the sound of his native language when she speaks it. She does not demand he be more human, or more Vulcan, and pours cream into her theris-masu, the steam from the tea rising from both of their mugs. He does not think about how she never hesitates to reach for his hand or let him press his mind against hers, and he does not feel calm and at peace when their thoughts touch, since he is quite capable of feeling nothing at all.

He has spent his entire life controlling his thoughts and pushes aside everything except how she moves against him, the skin of her neck, the curve of her body. He is not always entirely successful, but has always worked to perfect skills at which he is less than completely adept.

…

Pike asks him to serve as his First Officer. He is not confident in his ability to manage a crew of mostly humans, when he often finds them bewildering and irrational.

She does not offer him platitudes. “It’ll be hard,” she says, drawing her hand over his. “You’ll learn.” Her fingers are soft on his face and he stares at the ceiling as she traces his jaw, smoothes her hand down his neck and shoulder. He nods and thinks it is logical for her to offer reassurance, since she knows humans far better than he does. He knows he is not grateful and appreciative of her words but finds himself thinking back to them when he accepts Pike’s offer the next day.

…

“Tell me about her,” his mother prods. 

He does not know what to say, does not know how to begin a description that represents who she is, and who she is to him.

“She must be lovely,” his mother says. “She must be incredible, my beautiful, brilliant boy.”

…

He does not miss her when she is gone on a training mission on the Exeter for a week, and does not feel anticipation when his door chimes or relief when she touches him, and does not feel affection, endearment, fondness, or tenderness when she smiles and kisses him.

He does not reach for her face sooner than he would normally, since his thoughts were not lonely and quiet in her absence. He does not savor the press of her mind, nor is her apparent joy at being with him again something that surges through him until his eyes close and he drops his forehead against hers. He is quite sure he is not happy. He resolves to focus on not feeling this as he carries her to his bed. 

He did not think words like interminable and intolerable while she was gone and he is quite able to push aside what he did not feel in her absence as they hold each other close. 

…

“Commander,” she says, tracing over the new stripes on his sleeve from his recent promotion, necessitated by his new position on the Enterprise. He is tired of the congratulations and tired of the attention in the wake of the official announcement, and would rather return to his work.

He does not mind as much when she puts her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek. “I’m so proud of you,” she says, kissing him again. “They’re going to call you the best first officer in the fleet someday.”

He closes his eyes and drops his face to her shoulder as she hugs him. He is Vulcan. He does not hug, he does not feel nervous about his new responsibilities and duties, and he does not feel apprehension about his new role. He does not feel any of these things when she puts her hand in his and he draws it to his chest, wrapping his other arm around her back, her particular warmth flooding through him.

…

He knows there is a reason Vulcans seek to control their emotions, knows the overwhelming crush of what it means to be his species, to feel with that veracity and strength, and knows for the first time in his life a new difficulty with that discipline. 

He runs his hands over her flat stomach and long legs and into her hair as he kisses her, her body calming and necessary against his. He listens to her stories about her childhood and remembers the heat of the desert through her words. She is intelligent in a way that makes her stand out in a room of brilliant cadets and officers, and he enjoys finding things she knows more about than he does. She is universally liked across the Academy, and he admires what everyone does, her kindness and compassion, and her unerring acceptance of cultural and personal differences. Her mind is fascinating, and beautiful, and she smiles when he touches it, and is the first person with whom he is able to fully, and confidently, distinguish the difference between laughing with and at.

He should not feel as much as he does, but he has always pushed at what Vulcan culture and society expects of him. 

…

When he calls her by her given name, she smiles at him and touches his hand.

When he calls her anything else, expressions so different than the other Vulcan he has taught her in his bed, he is not sure she understands the words he says into her hair as their breathing slows and he tries to push away the tightness in his chest.

When she repeats them back to him, he can no long quell what rises in him, and when her hand finds his, he no longer tries, closing his eyes with the wash of what rushes between the link of their minds.


End file.
